Posted
by
timothy
on Thursday March 11, 2010 @10:08PM
from the classic-miscommunication dept.

CWmike writes "Canadian interface design firm MetaLab has accused Mozilla of stealing user interface elements for a development tool in the browser maker's Jetpack project, which aims to simplify add-on making. MetaLab leveled the charges on Tuesday when the 11-person firm's founder, Andrew Wilkinson, blogged about the similarities between his company's designs and those posted by Mozilla for FlightDeck, a Jetpack editor. 'What they did was pretty ridiculous,' Wilkinson said on Thursday. 'There's a difference between inspiration versus ripping something off,' he said. 'The measurements of the graphic elements [Mozilla took from us] were the exact same, the very same pixels. When someone takes your images from the server hosting them, that's crossing the line.' Mozilla apologized to MetaLab on Wednesday, saying in a blog post, 'While the design direction being implemented does not utilize these design elements, we inadvertently included the early mockups in our blog post and video announcing the next phase of development for the Jetpack SDK ... We sincerely apologize to MetaLab for incorporating design elements from their web site in our early mockups and for posting them publicly without proper attribution.'" Alexander Limi of the Firefox User Experience Team points out that MetaLab has accepted the apology, too — worth bearing in mind.

Without stealing of ideas, we wouldn't have Open Office which implemented feature-for-feature what Microsoft Office has. Without stealing, we wouldn't have KDE and Gnome with implemented many features from Windows and OS X. How could open source survive without it?:)

That depends on what your open source project is. If you want to replace a current application with an open source one, coming up with your own ideas of how to implement it won't be the best option. If I wanted my company to replace their versions of Microsoft Word with an open source word processor, I would want the application to reliably and hopefully in a simple way do all that Microsoft Word currently does. There is no point in making a word processor if it's so different and can do all these other things if it can't do the things I need it to do.

Coming up with ideas has nothing to do with open/prop source.

When making something new, to look into a market/niche that isn't being catered for currently, come up with new ideas, do things that no-one has done already. Be creative. When trying to take a market from someone else or to replace a product, copy the functionality features - but even at that point, it would be better to look at how those functions and features might be improved in the process. Giving someone a product that does exactly the same thing won't give them any incentive at all to change. Giving them a product that does the same things, but better/simpler/easier/quicker is when you will have a product worth swapping to.

There's a difference between being derivative and being an attempt at a 1:1 copy.

The problem with this is the metalab seem to be implying Mozilla ripped them off, they actually have no idea who it was (based on RTFA, not doing any additional research).

It seems that Metalab submitted a design for this project, but it is not the design that mozilla used. Mozilla went with a different design that was ripped off from Metalabs homepage. That might just mean someone else saw the same invite to tender that Metalab did and searched various design company websites until they found something half

Xerox called and offered you a job to speak out against Microsoft and Apple for stealing all their really good ideas. I told them you thought that stealing their money for something you do for free would be stealing... They said they fully understood and also welcomed me to something called the 'Tautology club'.... I'm not sure if I'm sure about what that word really means...

Why reinvent the wheel? If there's a particular design/UI element that's in use, has been updated and refined for decades, and is generally accepted as the easiest or most efficient, or even just the most familiar way to do things, why reinvent it? If you eschew it completely, you're likely to alienate a significant portion of your user base.

Without stealing, we wouldn't have many works of Shakespeare or Bach, both of whom copied liberally from their Italian counterparts. (Of course that was before copyright existed, hence plagiarism of ideas was not only legal, but accepted.)

If we lump patents with copyrights, that was also the time when people who invented great stuff tended to die in poverty after the entire western world "stole their imaginary property" (a.k.a. "was inspired by their ideas"):http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Crompton

Oh please! Can we let this old 'for the starving (insert authors/inventors/artists) bullshit just DIAF already? Sure that was true back when copyrights were first invented, you know when they were actually SANE, but that time has been gone for decades now. All copyrights and patents do know is crush the little guy who can't compete with supermegacorp who has a patent warchest or pile of copyrights the size of the great pyramids.

You want proof? One sentence-Steamboat Willie is STILL under copyright. Than man has been dead since before cars had seatbelts, yet one of his first works, made when planes were made of cloth and antibiotics were but a dream, is STILL under copyrights! This gross abuse of power is why innovation in this country (with the exception of laws and ponzi schemes) is pretty much dead, as the only way to survive the patent trolls and other leeches is to sell out to some multinational who will give you pennies while they rake in the truckloads of cash.

So please, just put down the Ayn Rand and smell the fail, okay? All this "IP" crap has done is give supermegacorps like Disney enough cash to buy out every politician on the planet, while making sure the little guy doesn't have a chance in hell. it is like all this stupidity of record companies suing each other because one of their bands made a song that sounds like something already in their catalog. Well duh! There are only 12 notes in the western scale, and thanks to copyrights being "forever minus a single day" now the odds of find 4 or 5 chords that don't grate on your ears that someone else hadn't ever played before is pretty much zilch. Or should we stop all artists from recording now because it may infringe on some supermegacorp's back catalog?

I know that, but you would be surprised how many "Corporation yay!" types read her book and get it completely wrong. I mean I have heard Rush trying to claim her as a republican role model, and Rush is about the most megacorp patent loving shill out there!

it is no different than how so many "corporation yay!" types claim to be "God fearing Christians" but when you actually sit down and let them tell you what they believe they actually worship Supply Side Jesus [youtube.com] instead of the one from the bible. It is how co

Do you believe and follow Glenn Beck? And old pill popping Rush? if the answer is no you are most like an old school Barry Goldwater conservative and I hate to be the one to break the news to you but your kind was kicked out of the party a couple of decades ago for the "corporation yay!", the "bash them with this bible cause we need a reason to hate", and the "more police state powers!" types.

So I'm sorry, but you've been kicked to the curb just as old fashioned liberals and progressives have been kicked ou

Those are widely recognised to be taken from transcriptions that he made, and never published under his own name. This was common practice in the Baroque period as a means of studying a composer's work.

However, your remark about composers borrowing from each other is correct. Vivaldi borrowed extensively from Ruggieri and Corelli.

What's similar about KDE4 and 7? All the new features in the latter, compared to Vista, don't have any direct analogs in KDE (so far as I know).

KDE vs Vista would be a more interesting comparison... but I still strongly suspect that the whole "ooh shiny" angle was picked from OS X rather than KDE. But if you can show otherwise, by demonstrating a feature unique to KDE that was copied, by all means, go ahead!

You just need to search Slashdot, when the first screenshots of Windows 7 came out, many compared it to KDE4. Now everyone compares Seven to KDE4...which is unfair, as history shows otherwise. I doubt Aaron Seigo and related folks had inside views of Seven's development.But as the parent implies, it seems defending KDE4 is a risky position here, I wonder why. Qt is free now, and KDE is as much of a windows clone as most window managers out there, with a taskbar and titlebars. Gnome is a windows clone too.

Without stealing of ideas, we wouldn't have Open Office which implemented feature-for-feature what Microsoft Office has. Without stealing, we wouldn't have KDE and Gnome with implemented many features from Windows and OS X. How could open source survive without it?:)

Microsoft Word is the standard in word processing, it was reasonable to get a half functional free equivalent for users who couldn't run MSWord, but mozilla is huge and quite capabable of creating their own designs, while the firm they stole from is much smaller and not a standard in any way.

Your examples aren't the same as what happened here. It's not that MetaLab's product influenced the design elements in Mozzila's Jetpack, It's the fact that the gui elements are exactly the same. None of your examples are exactly the same and some of them have even gone back the other direction with open source software inspiring closed source software. Too be fair to Mozzila though, it was just a mock-up which is aimed at getting the point across.

Also Access from dBase. It is interesting that you include both Lotus 123 and Visicalc. It just goes to show that borrowing ideas has gone on since year dot. Even Visicalc was just a pretty interface to existing spreadsheet programs.

Just imagine how crap software would be these days if they had software patents back then. We would still be having to run our spreadsheet in non-interactive batch mode.

That's why I have no problems at all with incorporating ideas from proprietary software into open source proje

> My only beef is when people get all high and mighty about ideas being borrowed in the> other direction. Who cares if Microsoft or Apple take ideas that started in the open> source world. The end result is an improved user experience for all software.

No one cares about what Microsoft or Apple copies about until they make noises about "freedom to innovate" or start patent trolling.

Feature for Feature you say? Staroffice started life as "StarWriter" way back when 8 bit processors were cutting edge. I'd say there was and still is quite a lot of 'feature' copying happening on all sides. Probably a lot of what you think of as copying is just common sense GUI design, some of it accidental, but either way, someone has to write the code, it's not like Microsoft released the source.

Without stealing of ideas, we wouldn't have Open Office which implemented feature-for-feature what Microsoft Office has. Without stealing, we wouldn't have KDE and Gnome with implemented many features from Windows and OS X. How could open source survive without it?:)

Feeling trolly today?

Both Apple and Microsoft copied from Xerox, Lotus etc.
The difference is that, when a FOSS copies from something else, it does not have the chutzpah to claim originality.

While I'd admit they look very similar (FlightDeck looks better IMHO) this is the internet, every well designed site ends up on other sites. How many websites look like Amazon? Look at all the identical looking blogs created with wordpress. Honestly MetaLab I think you're mad they took your design and improved upon

The same old tired excuse -- did you even look at the article and linked blog entry? This isn't about stealing of ideas, this is stealing work pixel-for-pixel. That's never OK, and has nothing to do with open source or "artistic inspiration".

> This isn't about stealing of ideas, this is stealing work pixel-for-pixel. That's never OK.

I have two questions. How does one "steal" pixels and why is it not ok? If elements of their UI look good, I say use them. There is NO WAY that it harms the original application, and I'm pretty sure that you can't copyright a piece of a UI.

Application 1 pays a staff of graphic designers and UI designers to create images and a well thought out design. That cost must be included in the price of the product in order to make profit. Application two grabs finished images straight out off of the other companies website and slaps them into their product with no effort or cost. Application 2 is now benefiting off the work of Application 1's staff. Application 1 doesn't look any better for the extra money spent on it, and has a higher cost.

Most people don't understand how stuff work. Just learn where is a icon, and learn to press it, and press again on other icon with other name... don't learn to use stuff, learn to run these "small scripts". If you moves that icon, you break his "script", if you changes the icon too much, or removes it, the user become lost.So to have user work with your stuff ( a Office tools program, or a Desktop ) you have to completelly copy what the users have learn. This is some menus and icons in a Office program

The days are getting so slow around here that they have had to resort to traveling into the distant past to find stories to post.

But yeah everyone keeps saying 1:1 copy - the horror! I bet most of these same people are guilty of doing this with their own program GUI's or websites. Honestly we all know that the 'make it shiny' peoples aren't always the 'make it stable' peoples so this really just isn't a big deal. It's a damn mock up plus the underlining code is totally different. It's not like when Microsof

The summary alludes to this, but just in case (since 90% of people who comment probably won't read past the headline):

Update: I just got off the phone with the team at Mozilla, who apologized and clarified a few things. The design which used our site’s design elements was a development build and according to them the design has been changed in newer builds. That said, it was used in their launch video as well as their blog post announcing the product. They told me that that the team who put together the blog post and video was unaware of the similarities at the time of inclusion. We’ve asked for a public apology, and I’ll be doing a follow-up post tomorrow [and they did].

So, a company decided to take shortcuts in creating a mockup of a project still in early development, and is being blasted because of it? Seriously, this was nowhere near a final release or even a beta release. It was a mockup, designed solely to get across an idea of what the final product interface would look like. Tasking an art team to create all-new icons and artwork is generally counter to the idea of the quick-and-dirty nature of mockups.

Well, Mozilla reject their bid proposal, where Metalabs could've earned $XXX for their labor, but went ahead and used their design for their own purposes, regardless if it's just a mockup. It's like if you told potential investors or your great new gadget, and in good faith did not make them sign a NDA (those are so pretentious unless you're *both* very big companies), rejected your idea, but went ahead and placed an RFP, or beta test, or whatever using your idea as a skeleton.

Even something small as a bid proposal takes time and money to put together: from programmers, to art & design guys, to marketing, and sales.

Jetpack is pretty much an attempt at making firefox extensions greasemonkey scripts that hold no actual application power. They were talking of removing normal extension support for that fake sugary stuff. Plus the idea that normal people will be making quick extensions is just ridiculous. Making a normal ff extension is not that hard, it's all quite documented and you can take any simple extension as base template if scared...

1) Extensions created with Jetpack (the actual framework, not the prototype based on ideas from Ubiquity) have to a large extent the same powers as an old-style extension. There is a certain number of capabilities provided, but if you need more, you can write your own capabilities, share them, or indeed use others users shared capabilities.

2) As an official Jetpack Ambassador, and Ubiquity core developer (as previously mentioned, the base of some of the ideas for Jetpack), I can honestly say that I have never heard talks about ditching regular extensions, except from user-comments on sites like Slashdot. Indeed, many of us involved with the project have addressed this issue on several occasions.

3) The idea was never for "normal people" to make extensions, it was to widen the audience from a very few XUL developers (I believe the number is in the low end of 4-5000), to web-developers in general.

There are several interesting possibilities with this, amongst them companies using existing web developers in their employment to create work-flow enhancing extensions quickly, and letting website developers create new ways of interacting with their site. Especially in the latter case, the extensive security model in Jetpack compared with old-style extensions, and the ease of install/uninstall is paramount.

Seriously, there are only a few ways you can make a decent UI that is familiar. Sharing user interfaces is a -good thing- when it comes down to it, the more familiar an application is, the easier it is to use. Imagine if every single program had a radically different UI. You opened up Firefox and it looked nothing like IE, which looked nothing like Opera which looked nothing like Chrome, if this happened probably everyone would still be using Mosaic. The more UIs borrow from one another, the easier they are

I just wanted to note that apparently Mozilla didn't remove anything from MetLab's servers; all data was intact and unharmed. Things were copied, yes, but that didn't prevent MetLab from continuing to use their UI elements, unlike what their accusations make it sound like (last time I had my car stolen, I couldn't drive it until I got it back, but maybe MetLab inhabits a different dimension than me).

What does it matter if it was a mockup or the real thing? Last I checked using "UI elements" was not protected by copyright or patents. This is the same as the Microsoft and Apple "Look-and-feel" lawsuit from last century. The original complaint was about mockups using straight copied images which could be a copyright infraction but the final product even if it looked nearly identical would be non-infringing. KDE and GNOME both have UI themes that completely rip off various versions of Windows and MacOS. Th

More like people are just people. Our experiences give us bias, and there is nobody who can achieve perfect objectivity in every situation. People here have a propensity to cheer for open source software. Through their own experiences, Fox viewers have a different perspective. It's not bad, it's just life. The alternative would be to throw out all emotion and become as the Vulcans. Yes, we're all biased. Yes, we're all emotional. Yes, we're all hypocrites--especially those of us who pretend to have

They did (privately) report it to Mozilla first. The blog went up after Mozilla ignored them. Mozilla could have handled it privately if they were concerned. It's obvious Mozilla only apologized because they were receiving negative attention, not because they think there was a problem.

Er, you can't cite your own comment in support of your comment. You need to provide a citation from Metalab that says they did report it privately first, and (preferably) a citation from Mozilla agreeing that this happened.

My understanding is that Metalab blogged without contacting Mozilla first.